India Journal: When Scientists Become Stars

When Venkatraman Ramakrishnan won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2009, he gave an interview to The Telegraph in Calcutta in which he seemed to suggest that he was disturbed by the pride that Indians felt in his achievement.

Ranjani Iyer Mohanty

He said that science is done in the pursuit of knowledge, not in nationalistic terms where one country competes with another. He also mentioned that in the U.S., Nobel Prize winners were just one day’s news in the press in comparison with India’s “almost exaggerated reaction.”

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Something similar happened earlier this week in Chennai where he had come to attend the Indian Science Congress. When he came to the inauguration of the Children Science Congress, he was surrounded by – surprise! – children, who all wanted to meet him.

Here’s what he later said: “I was mobbed and found it difficult to move around the hall. It was unfortunate. I could not explain to him [meaning Thomas Steitz, his co-Nobel prize winner] the advances made by Indian science because of the commotion. We are not cricket or movie stars”.

Venkatraman seems perturbed by all this Indian attention, but it’s not difficult to understand.

In this age of migration and mobility and multi-nationalism, it may well be outdated for some people to be pigeon-holed by the land of their birth. But while the bounds of nationality may be insignificant for this section of the truly globalized elite who have travelled, lived, and worked in a number of countries, much of India’s population is still rooted to not just its nation, but its state, and identifies strongly with both.

So it is not surprising that they see Venkatraman as an Indian. And since he comes from the town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, he received an especially rousing welcome in Chennai, as the home-boy done good. To paraphrase a popular cricket ad, ‘Enga pillai Venky-ki periya whistle adinga’.

It’s human nature, and perhaps a bit more Indian nature, to try and connect with another – especially a very successful another – through whatever commonality available: everything from “I went to nursery school with your son” to “My aunt’s cousin’s neighbour’s daughter was in the same university as you 30 years ago” to “I’m from India too!”

There was another Nobel Prize-winning scientist who received adulation everywhere he went, but his response was somewhat different. He received rapturous welcomes by huge crowds in the U.S. and Japan.

When he visited Palestine in 1922, he was greeted like a head of state. During one of his many talks there, overflowing with an excited public audience, Albert Einstein said: “I consider this the greatest day of my life. Before, I have always found something to regret in the Jewish soul, and that is the forgetfulness of its own people. Today I have been made happy by the sight of the Jewish people learning to recognize themselves and to make themselves as a force in the world,” according to Walter Isaacson’s “Einstein: His Life & Universe.”

There’s no right, or wrong, response from the public: they are simply displaying how they feel.

If the Indian public wishes to place Venkatraman alongside Sachin Tendulkar or Shah Rukh Khan in their pantheon of heroes, that is their prerogative.

If they wish to think of him as an Indian, in spite of his claim to solely global citizenship, no one can stop them. If they can relate to him and be inspired by his achievements to do better for themselves, that’s all for the good.

And how nice that Indian school children should be excited by Venkatraman’s visit: it’s a sign of a balanced society that its young people revere brilliant scientists as much as they do ace cricketers and movie stars.

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India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.